Peter Alexander leaves NBC News
Peter Alexander, one of the industry’s hardest-working TV news correspondents, will leave his longtime home at NBC News, he announced to viewers Saturday morning during a weekend broadcast of “Today.”
For years, Alexander has taken on the logistical challenge of co-anchoring the Saturday broadcast of “Today” and serving as NBC News’ chief correspondent in the White House. Those duties often have him working in Washington during the week and then traveling to New York City for “Today” duties. In total, he has been on the White House beat for fifteen years and has worked the “Today” weekends since 2018.
“Peter has been a trusted presence with extensive reach within NBC News, and a friend to so many across the Washington Bureau, ‘Today’ and the broader NBC News team,” Chloe Arensberg, NBC News’ Washington Bureau chief, and Matt Carluccio, executive producer of weekend broadcasts of ‘Today,’ said in a memo to staff Saturday. “We are grateful for all his contributions and wish him the best.” During an emotional segment on Saturday, Alexander mentioned an interest in being more present for his two young children after missing more than 200 Friday nights to prepare for his weekend role.
Alexander declined to specify where he might work next, but MS NOW has an open anchor slot before 11 a.m. on weekdays. The Versant-backed network, once a corporate sibling of NBC News, recently revised its daily schedule but declined to name a host for its 11 a.m. position, noting that details would emerge at a later date.
Alexander has been called out for asking reasonable questions of President Trump that are causing backlash for one reason or another. For example, during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, Alexander asked Trump, then in his first term in the Oval Office, “What do you say to the Americans who are looking at you right now and are afraid?” Trump lashed out. “I say you’re a terrible reporter!” he replied.
The journalist told it Variety in 2022 that he had to work between different administrations at quite a fast pace. During Trump’s first White House, he felt like he was being consumed by “a 24-hour news cycle every 24 minutes.” Under President Biden, the White House correspondent still had a lot to process. One early Biden initiative involved a 45-minute background call for reporters. “I could have given you 25 pages about it,” Alexander recalled.
Alexander joined NBC News in 2004 and reported on a range of stories around the world and in the US. He was assigned to cover the 2012 Republican presidential race before being named White House correspondent that year. After a stint as a national correspondent from 2014 to 2016, Alexander returned to the White House in 2017 and was named co-chief White House correspondent alongside Kristen Welker. He fulfilled those duties when he was named co-anchor of Saturday’s “Today” and became the network’s only chief White House correspondent when Welker was elevated to moderator of “Meet the Press.”
Alexander has expressed a desire for new challenges in recent months, according to two people familiar with the matter, but with Welker doing well on “Meet the Press” and Savannah Guthrie and Craig Melvin settling in on “Today” and Tom Llamas on “NBC Nightly News,” there weren’t many bigger roles he could be considered for.
Other TV news personnel have taken similar steps. Llamas, then the weekend anchor of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” left ABC News in January 2021, largely due to the fact that David Muir was in charge of weekday anchor duties at the evening news program. Llamas moved on to NBC News and eventually succeeded Lester Holt at “Nightly.”
While MS NOW recently assigned new two-hour shifts to Stephanie Ruhle and Alicia Menendez, the network has a long history of offering an hour-long program tied to events in Washington, D.C. Andrea Mitchell hosted such a show when the network was called MSNBC for nearly two decades.
NBC News expects to call on several staffers to fill Alexander’s positions for an interim period.
